Laughing at another's tragedy

I have been trying to categorize the stories told at Carapace into a handful of broad categories. Many stories are about a negative thing happening and the storyteller making something positive out of it. A while ago I separated the categories “I found beauty in tragedy” and “I found comedy in tragedy.” There are a good number of stories in both categories and they seem to get at slightly different interpretations of life events, although they are obviously related. I have, for now, added both of Cris’s stories about drunken friends getting separated from their groups into the category of “I found comedy in tragedy,” however I see a difference between his stories and most of the other stories in this category. The “tragedy” happened not to him, but to the friends that wandered off. It is easier to find someone else’s tragedy funny than your own.